About the Book

In this enlightening book, you’ll explore the life struggles and adaptations leading up to and following HIV infection in young Americans. The cases presented in Youths Living with HIV envisage a variety of experiences of youths living with HIV and AIDS, including individuals of different races, of each gender, and of different sexual preferences. This discussion of the private “troubles” and experiences of youths helps you understand and identify dependent and larger public issues surrounding HIV infection and AIDS, and demonstrates the need for comprehensive and targeted intervention and preventive measures.This book is the result of the first federally funded multi-site study to research, develop, and provide HIV education and prevention specifically to young Americans. Detailed narrative descriptions were collected by ethnographers of the Joven Project, which started in October 1992, and explored and documented the lives of youths living with HIV and AIDS over a two-year period. This ethnographic exploratory study was one component of a larger National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) supported Secondary AIDS Education and Prevention Program. Youths Living with HIV reconstructs the past and present struggles that young people living with HIV and AIDS face(d), employing qualitative field interviews. Larger and interrelated developmental, social, cultural, and political factors are also illustrated and discussed. As you read through the chapters, you’ll gain insight into: